Sandy Hook students head to new school

CONNECTICUT SHOOTING

Nanci G. Hutson

Updated 10:48 pm, Thursday, January 3, 2013

Photo: Jessica Hill, Associated Press

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A bus traveling from Newtown, Conn., to Monroe stops in front of 26 angels along the roadside on the first day of classes for Sandy Hook Elementary School students since the Dec. 14 shooting, in Monroe, Conn., Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013. Chalk Hill School in Monroe was overhauled especially for the students from the Sandy Hook School shooting. less

A bus traveling from Newtown, Conn., to Monroe stops in front of 26 angels along the roadside on the first day of classes for Sandy Hook Elementary School students since the Dec. 14 shooting, in Monroe, Conn., ... more

Photo: Jessica Hill, Associated Press

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A Newtown student rides a bus to the new site of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Monroe, Conn.

A Newtown student rides a bus to the new site of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Monroe, Conn.

Photo: Timothy A. Clary, AFP/Getty Images

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Roses with the faces of the Sandy Hook Elementry students and adults killed are seen on a pole in Newtown, Connecticut on January 3, 2013. Students at the elementary school where a gunman massacred 26 children and teachers last month were returning Thursday to classes at an alternative campus described by police as "the safest school in America." Survivors were finally to start their new academic year in the nearby town of Monroe, where a disused middle school has been converted and renamed from its original Chalk Hill to Sandy Hook. TOPSHOTS/AFP PHOTO / TIMOTHY A. CLARYTIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images less

Roses with the faces of the Sandy Hook Elementry students and adults killed are seen on a pole in Newtown, Connecticut on January 3, 2013. Students at the elementary school where a gunman massacred 26 ... more

Photo: Timothy A. Clary, AFP/Getty Images

Sandy Hook students head to new school

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Monroe, Conn. --

Sandy Hook fourth-grade twins Benjamin and Ethan Paley marched up their school bus steps for their first official day at their new school Thursday and didn't look back.

Their father, Andrew, said the twins were fearless, eagerly waving goodbye until they reunited in the front lobby of the former Chalk Hill Middle School renamed Sandy Hook Elementary, at least until the end of this year.

Parents were welcome to spend part or all of the day in the new school Thursday as part of the transition, a gesture Paley said parents seemed to need more than the students.

Monroe officials donated the shuttered school to Newtown after the shooting of 20 first-graders and six educators, including Principal Dawn Hochsprung, on Dec. 14. The school where the shootings occurred is a crime scene.

The Paley twins were among 500 Sandy Hook students who Thursday resumed doing "things we know are good for kids," said Superintendent Janet Robinson.

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Wearing coats, mittens and hats on a sunny yet frigid morning, Sandy Hook's students, in kindergarten to fourth grade, rode buses to their new school, some of them pressing faces to the windows.

Along the route were hand-made greetings, angel statues to honor the memory of their lost classmates, bouquets of balloons, and pledges of love and prayer from their host community.

Inside the school, children entered classrooms that resembled their former rooms, with desks lined up the same way and left-behind belongings arranged as they were when they left Sandy Hook.

One difference for students and parents, and the community, is a stepped-up police presence.

"They picked the right police officers," the Paley twins' father said. "They are amazing with the kids. They (students) know they are police, but they get right down on their knees and crack jokes with them. "

Thursday was not the Paley twins' first trip to their new school. They visited the two-school campus tucked into a windy, residential neighborhood several times during the holiday break.

Interim Principal Donna Page, who was Sandy Hook's principal before her retirement in 2010, assured parents in a letter that the victims "are not far from any of their hearts and minds."